"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of needy, crazy stupid liars, seriously, I can't take it anymore! I grew up with them, I live with them, I work with them and no matter how fast I run or far I go, they breed and come after me. It's like a zombie movie except the only scary part is it never ends!"Mary Shannon, In Plain Sight, ep.302.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Quote of the Day
This may have been in the minds of some of the senators taking part in the Goldman Sachs hearing today:
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4 comments:
You know, I'm a little curious about something that hasn't been mentioned.
These investment banks used to run all sorts of commercials about how much we should trust them... And now, whether or not we can actually prove criminal intent in a court of law, everyone knows they screwed investors at all levels to make profits for themselves, and only for themselves.
So can any investor, ever, ever, ever again trust any big bank or investment house with a red fucking cent? Wall Street used to run on trust. That is so fucking gone now, and will never come back until we all know that a G-man is standing over every last one of them and watching their every moves.
And *that* is never going to happen, either.
Wall Street used to be about the billionaires making their money from the mistakes of the middle class, who assumed they could 'make it big' and join their ranks.
What kind of fool will invest again?
"Fools with short memories" may be the answer that you are looking for.
I noticed that hardly any of the Goldman guys at the hearing today would admit that they owed a fiduciary duty to their clients.
Someone would now have to be eight flavors of stupid to put their money into Goldman Sachs. You'd almost be better off financing the operation of a meth lab.
What they did was, to my mind, the most ruinously stupid thing they could have done to themselves. Almost as bad as a criminal turning himself in for the reward... short-sighted. Death by self-interest.
Even before any of these slimy tactics became public knowledge, they spent years telling us to trust them. Sam Waterston and John Houseman spring to mind. Then they just shat all over trust like it simply didn't matter. For a one time win. A big one, to be sure, but bankers should be capable of thinking in the long term, for their own interests, right?
Madoff must be sitting in prison wondering why the hell he's alone.
The problem with Madoff, of course, is that he completely rigged the game and the rigging was obvious to anyone who gave it more than a cursory inspection. No investment house is smart enough to be able to deliver X% each and every year.
Goldman Sachs operated more like the owner of a Kentucky Derby horse which was touted as a near-sure winner. In this case, the owner knew the horse would break its leg in the stretch, so they bet enough on the other horses to more than cover their losses if their own horse went lame. If their horse did win, by some miracle, their winnings more than covered their bets.
So Goldman had it both ways. But they got found out when people started wondering why those guys weren't going south the same way that Lehman Brothers did.
It's more than Goldman, of course. Anybody who relies on the bond ratings of S&P or Moody's from here on out is a real fool.
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